


THE HEART CAN STOP WHEN YOU HEAR SOMETHING NOT MEANT FOR YOUR EARS

by birdring (twoif)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Break Up, LCK Roster Swaps Are A Bitch, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:21:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/birdring
Summary: "I like you the most," Kyungho whispered, still half-asleep. "I'd jump off a mountain for you."





	

In November, as ROX came crashing down silently around them, Kyungho and Seohaeng fucked almost every day, rough and quick, like there was a quota their bodies were trying hard to meet. Kyungho spent much of the lead-up to KeSPA dehydrated, over-sexed, and confused, sure that he'd broken Seohaeng's heart somehow and not sure why he was the one nursing the heartache. Neither he nor Seohaeng got off much on pain, so it wasn't that they hurt each other any more than before. Instead, they stopped taking their time with it, and developed a penchant for half-shucked pants and semi-public spaces, like they expected each time to be the last and they needed to convince each other there was a reason for it. 

This wasn't the first time they'd done this. Last year when they'd gotten back to Seoul after the world championships, Seohaeng had jerked Kyungho off in the bathroom while the others were still analyzing pick-and-bans and then goaded Kyungho into a shouting match while they were both still zipping up their pants. "You make me feel like it's my fault," he'd said, and Kyungho had shoved him into the sink, furious and on the verge of tears as he shouted back, "don't blame me when you blame yourself." They'd both been morose afterwards, subjected to an hour-long lecture by Coach Kang and perversely thankful for the yelling which gave them a good cover for why they'd snuck off. But a few days later they had bounced back, tighter than before, and played a practice scrim so perfect it lifted the team and ultimately convinced Seohaeng to stay with Kyungho for one more year, one more chance at worlds with ROX.

The one and only time Beomhyun had ever commented on the stranger side of their relationship, he'd said that the two of them liked to wallow around in the mud so that they could wash themselves clean and do it all over again. It wasn't meant as a compliment, but Kyungho took it as one anyway. He'd always thought of it as their team affiliation coming to bite them in the ass; they were Tigers, after all. They worked harder because they were doomed to imperfection, because they had to kick and scream their way to the top. 

Sometimes Kyungho found himself thinking that if he and Seohaeng could get through this year, the making up would be the strongest it had ever been, strong enough to bind Seohaeng to him forever, through free agency and different teams and the possibility of meeting each other as rivals on the world championship stage, wearing different jackets but the same heart. It was a terrifying thought, a small pinpoint of water he'd trained his eyes on as he fell from ten thousand kilometers headfirst. When he dwelled on it too long, it made him want to vomit. 

"I think we should stop doing this," Kyungho told Seohaeng, pulling desperately at his jacket, his shirt, his hair. 

"Why should I give a shit what you think?" Seohaeng asked him, and, without waiting for an answer, fell to his knees.

 

 

 

Two days later he was startled awake by Seohaeng in his bedroom, Jongin trailing after him like a particularly unwieldy wraith. Seohaeng had taken off his shirt by the time Kyungho sat up properly, gooseflesh cold against Kyungho's fingers. Kyungho licked his lips, not sure if this was a dream, and whispered, "This isn't a good idea."

"Yeah, well, good thing you're not calling the shots," Jongin grumbled, following Seohaeng's lead and throwing his shirt to the ground. 

"Does this involve you?" Kyungho hissed.

"Actually, just as much as it involves _you_ ," Seohaeng snapped. 

This was something Seohaeng had talked about wanting for a while, and it made a kind of sense for Seohaeng to do it now. They were running out of time, or at least running out of goodwill, if Seohaeng meant for Jongin to be involved. Once or twice Kyungho and Seohaeng had snuck out on clandestine dates when everyone else was nominally asleep so that Seohaeng could get drunk in a noraebang and haltingly describe to Kyungho exactly how he wanted it. But what worked in theory wasn't always the perfect reality — years of league had taught Kyungho that. And like league, for all the experience he and Seohaeng had, it mostly amounted to a handful of years they shared, bound up in each other's moves and preferences. Jongin was a betrayal of that, a move that belonged solely to Seohaeng, and Kyungho watched, stomach churning, as Seohaeng kissed him perfunctorily, positioning him on Kyungho's bed, revealing a familiarity with Jongin's body that devastated Kyungho. 

But even if Seohaeng had fooled around with Jongin before, Kyungho and Jongin were on different rhythms, untested on this particular bluff, in this particular combination. Seohaeng was leading them blind, awkward and graceless until he settled on straddling Jongin's lap with Kyungho behind him. Kyungho stretched Seohaeng with his fingers for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, maybe only a minute in the singular, before Seohaeng twitched backwards, trying to take them both. It didn't work, Seohaeng eventually shaking his head and weakly mouthing, _hurts, hurts too much_ , and they ended with just Kyungho in him, Jongin whispering filthy things in Seohaeng's ear that Kyungho couldn't hear, and Seohaeng came, crying, on Jongin's chest, dick untouched. 

It wasn't an exemplary moment for any of them. Kyungho threw Jongin out of the room when it was over, but ruined the dramatics by opening the door a second time to throw Jongin's shirt out into the hallway with him. Afterwards he and Seohaeng argued in hushed whispers as Seohaeng paced around his room, naked from the waist down, lube drying to tacky lines on his inner thigh. "I hate it when you do this," Kyungho said, starting to cry himself, "I hate when you make me treat you like this," and Seohaeng hissed, "What, like I'm worthless, which is how you actually feel?" before bursting into tears. Which wasn't productive, but at least when they were both crying, they weren't arguing. 

The next day Kyungho went out with his friends from high school and was shocked to find that no one could tell he was falling apart. His body smiled and laughed through a dinner and after-party without him; his voice was solid, his hands steady as they karaoked and joked around into the early morning. He'd gotten good at pretending he was a normal person, a normal 21-year-old with a job he liked and a person he cared for, and not a kid in a fantasy occupation straight out of a webtoon with a teammate he was fucking and fucking up. Maybe that made him a monster, he thought dully. Only a monster would push the people around him to act this way, and only a monster would have the strength to live on despite that, he reasoned. 

He came home to a flurry of unanswered chats from Hyukkyu, who was becoming steadily more impatient with Kyungho as the month dragged on. _You can be thankful and love a place for many years and still leaving it would be right_ , Hyukkyu had written. _People are the same._ Then, as if in correction, _all people are the same everywhere._

 

 

 

In the final days at the ROX dorm, they aimed for normalcy and shot somewhere shy of manic. It was easier to pretend that nothing was wrong when they acted like the team they'd dreamed into existence two years ago. Whenever there was a pause, inevitably one of them, Seohaeng or Beomhyun usually, would get overly emotional and have to leave the room, and the remaining members would so palpably avoid looking at Kyungho that he'd have to leave too. In the end the only answer was to avoid having any pauses. It was a mirror of Kyungho and Seohaeng, only without the sex: The Tigers crammed every available space with team activities — going to the arcade or solo-queuing at the same time or crowding around a street vendor selling fried food on sticks — to avoid talking about the impending breakup. 

It felt like an unwelcome miracle that life went on around Kyungho as if nothing had changed. They ate and played and went to bed and woke up and did it all over again, and if Kyungho closed his eyes, he could see himself one, two years out, still with this team, laughing at this fever dream of his. _In LPL it's easy to forget that other leagues exist until you play international,_ Gyeonghwan had told him, _because you are always happy playing when you are playing._ This was the truth: that this year with ROX had been the happiest year of Kyungho's life, that present happiness was always easier to comprehend then the unknown future, and sometimes, if he wasn't careful, he'd slip into a trap and start thinking that this would be the only happiness he'd ever have in his life. He was sandwiched between his memories and the twinge of sentimentality he was already feeling, the flash forward of an older him looking back on this time and reminiscing. 

As if swimming in thick, sticky sap, he watched in wonder as his teammates raised the KeSPA Cup above their heads, kissing it and unwinding themselves from paper streamers. Across the stage, Seohaeng carefully picked off a piece of glitter from Wangho's hair and patted down their youngest, positioning him for a photo. Behind Kyungho, Beomhyun, Jongin, and Seongmin exchanged pointless, comforting minutiae about the last game and where they would eat. When would this all crack, he wondered, today or tomorrow or never? Maybe it already had, and he, ghost-like, was the only one who didn't realize they'd already moved on without him. 

"Are you _crying_?" Jongin demanded. 

"No," Kyungho said, wiping furiously at his eyes. "What?"

"Idiot," Beomhyun said, almost fondly, "you're going to look stupid in our group shots."

"This isn't the summer finals," Seongmin joked. "You're going to be the only one puffy."

Unbidden, the memory of Seohaeng clinging to him, almost fainting, as they took to the stage for the summer final, came to Kyungho, as impossible and as far away to him as his own death. He put his hand on Seongmin's shoulder, and remembered Seohaeng, his weight the heat of a dying star as he leaned against Kyungho for support. It would never happen again, his traitorous heart told him. _It's what you have to give up. It was the only moment in your life you've ever made him — all of them — truly happy. Now all that is over._

 

 

 

It'd be easier if Kyungho were actually heartless. Instead he, too, moped and cried with the others, and Hojin had to take him out for late night chicken and beer to tell him he was being overdramatic. "Stop carrying on like this is someone else's problem," he said through a mouthful of sauce. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

"No," Kyungho said. It was the truth. "I mean, yes, I want this. But I also wanted everyone to be happy."

"To make an omelette, you gotta break some shells," Hojin reminded him.

"This isn't an omelette," Kyungho said, peevish. "These are my friends. This is my team."

" _Was_ your team," Hojin said, and they didn't say anything more. 

For Wangho, this was just a blip, different from his time at Na-Jin but for just as short a period of time. He was upset to lose his loving _hyungs_ and grieved, purely and without any of their baggage, but moved on just as cleanly. He didn't blame Kyungho, and said as much; his future was bright one way or another, and he'd be okay on any team, this one or the one he chose next.

Jongin did blame Kyungho and blamed him more with each day. Beomhyun didn't, for the moment, and would get into quiet, intense arguments with Jongin about it, like this was the funeral of a relative and he didn't think it polite for Jongin to pick a fight, but Kyungho thought he would, eventually. 

Maybe part of the problem was that Kyungho needed to be liked all the time. It wasn't an ideal disposition for someone who was famous mostly to people on the internet. Kyungho thought that Seohaeng did like him, or anyway seemed to still like him when they weren't fucking, but the fact that they'd no longer be teammates for the conceivable future had thrown them for a loop and they were in over their heads. The sex, too, was making them both worse people than if they had just stayed friends, contaminating a business relationship that was already complicated by their long history of friendship.

The bottom line was that Kyungho had wanted more for himself, and especially more for Seohaeng. Seohaeng deserved a pretty girl who would take care of him and call him handsome and coo over his tears and sing in tune. At the very least, Seohaeng deserved someone who would fight for him, even when Seohaeng didn't know what it was he wanted. But here they were, making do with each other. In 2015, Kyungho had begged Seohaeng to stay, and now it was 2016 and Kyungho was begging Seohaeng to go. Kyungho had bound Seohaeng to him, and now Kyungho was cutting them both loose. No one stayed together forever in professional gaming; even Seohaeng, who had gotten the heads-up about Reignover's departure from Immortals from Yeujin in a private chat the three of them shared, knew that. It didn't make the separation any less painful, or Kyungho seem any less villainous for doing it now, when it advantaged only him and Seohaeng not at all. 

The night before he left the house, Kyungho crept downstairs and stood in the doorway of the game room, where Seohaeng was drinking alone. Seohaeng had pulled up a search on Twitter for pictures of the ROX Tigers and was methodically retweeting them on his own account, getting steadily drunker and weepier as he went, his face haloed by the blue light of the screen. Kyungho saw his own face in flashes: a shadowed figure posing, or one of a group in white polo shirts, then a whole photoset of the two of them during the summer final, holding hands. He stood, shivering in a thin t-shirt, and wanted desperately to go in and hold Seohaeng, and knew that nothing good would come of it if he did. 

In the morning, he and Jongin packed the last of their things and dawdled on the first floor, waiting for their rides. Seohaeng's face was swollen but dry. Beomhyun, head bowed, couldn't bear to look at Kyungho. The four of them said goodbye to each other's feet, and Kyungho thought, _this is my last chance_. 

_For what?_ the monstrous half of him asked, sneering. 

"Oh, have they not left?" Wangho's voice rang out from the stairwell. Then, brightly, "Is Jongin- _hyung_ still here?"

 _There's nothing left for you here_ , both halves of him said, and Kyungho left. 

 

 

 

At All-Stars, Kyungho saw Yeujin again. After the last round on Sunday, they went out for tapas, and it felt normal, sentimental, like it was just another one of Yeujin's vacation stopovers in Seoul. They got a little drunker than either of them meant to, and when they got back to the hotel, Kyungho followed Yeujin to his room, tripping them both when the door opened under Yeujin's hand. They crashed, strangely quiet, to the ground. When he saw Yeujin's face, luminous in the dark with only the hallway lights, he felt thrown, hesitating as he pressed his lips against the corner of Yeujin's mouth. 

"Don't do this," Yeujin said, mouth set in a tired smile. 

"Do what?" Kyungho said, and then giggled. 

Yeujin shook his head. He felt Yeujin, straining with his foot, kick the hotel door behind them, then kiss Kyungho back, thoroughly and without an ounce of emotion. Kyungho responded despite himself, hungry for it. 

When they broke apart, Yeujin straightened his glasses, catching his breath. "This didn't work the last time," he reminded Kyungho. "It's not fair for you to try it again now."

Yeujin was right — they were no longer the people they had been at IM. Kyungho didn't miss Yeujin, not really; it was just that being with Yeujin reminded him of a time when things felt simple, when he was just a kid who liked league a lot and was shit at something he was trying very hard to be good at. Back then, he'd been the one to mistake Yeujin's overtures for friendship, and Yeujin had mistaken his greediness to be liked for emotional maturity, and there had been an awkward two months when they were fighting all the time and couldn't tell Seohaeng why. They knew each other too well now for there to be any illusions, and anyway Yeujin was the first person Kyungho had told about Seohaeng. _I always knew this was going to happen_ , Yeujin had said, strangely grim over Skype, like Kyungho's feelings were a diagnosis of chronic illness, _just how stupid do you think I am?_

"Yeujin," Kyungho breathed, "are you happy?"

"Sure," Yeujin told him. "Aren't you?"

"You're happy without me?"

"You think I've been pining after you all these years?" Yeujin said, disgusted but smiling. "You wish."

The words came up like vomit. He couldn't help himself. "If we had gone to Fnatic together," he said, clutching Yeujin like he was a lifeline, "would I have fucked you up too?"

"Oh Jesus, your ego," Yeujin grimaced. "Come down to earth, Song Kyungho. You don't matter that much."

"But maybe, at the time—" Kyungho said, his hands scrambling up Yeujin's body like Yeujin was a tree, "we could have—"

"Don't ever follow me to NA," Yeujin joked, shoving Kyungho's face away, pretending to be grossed out. "I don't want to be responsible for these complexes of yours."

"Fuck NA," Kyungho said in English, wrinkling his nose. "You can stay there, lose until you die, if you want." Yeujin pushed at him ineffectively, and they laughed, open-mouthed into each other, desperate all of a sudden, needing closeness. They were kids when they did this last, Kyungho thought distantly, as Yeujin closed his eyes, lifting himself off the ground to deepen the kiss. Maybe it hadn't been completely Kyungho's fault that he didn't understand his own feelings, way back in the IM days. Seohaeng wasn't the first person Kyungho had ever loved but probably he'd be the first person Kyungho would ever love as an adult and that, he was discovering, mattered to him. He was thankful that he'd crossed both milestones now, that he'd never hurt quite like this again. In a few years when he and Yeujin were both washed up players cashing checks in some second-tier league, he'd tell Yeujin that it was good to have learned early how much it hurt to give up one thing for another, how he was glad to have failed when his heart was still soft, before he became brittle. By then, Seohaeng might have forgiven him, or, even better, circled around to hating him for being the reason for their dissolution. He didn't dare allow himself to hope for a future where they'd still be together.

"Kyungho, you're hurting me," Yeujin said quietly.

Kyungho, startled, let go of Yeujin's arm. "Fuck, I'm sorry," he gasped. His fingers cramped with how tight they'd held Yeujin, and he wondered if he'd accidentally left bruises in the process. 

"No, not—" Yeujin stopped, swallowing. His throat rippled, and Kyungho wanted to put his mouth to it, feel it under his teeth, tell Yeujin that he'd gotten more handsome since the last time he'd seen him. He was somehow getting drunker, the alcohol spreading through his system, hot like shame. Or maybe it was just being this close again to Yeujin, just the two of them without Seohaeng. 

"Never mind," Yeujin murmured, turning his head to one side.

They lay there in the dark, staring at each other. Eventually Yeujin got up to brush his teeth, and Kyungho snuck out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. In their shared room, Jongin was already asleep, a snoring log under a thin pile of blankets. Kyungho fell on his bed without changing or washing his face. His head spun, and he pondered very seriously whether the floor would still be under his feet if he slid off his bed. Without realizing it, he slipped into a dream: he was halfway up a mountain with Yeujin and Seohaeng, panting as he put one heavy foot in front of another. It had the quality of a memory, a weekend excursion they might have joked about in excruciating, longing detail while they were with IM, but the Yeujin and Seohaeng with him were the same ages they were now, and anyway they had never vacationed like this together. The mountain was shrouded with fog, and the higher they moved the thicker it got, until Kyungho could no longer see either of them. The air was becoming thinner, and one of them, he shouted, had to jump off, there wasn't enough oxygen, one of them had to stop breathing so that the others could. _It's me_ , he choked out, even though they couldn't hear him, _I should be the one._

He woke up to the sound of Jongin brushing his teeth and spitting into the bathroom sink. "You came back," Jongin said, squinting at Kyungho's reflection in the mirror. "I thought you'd stay the night in Reignover's room."

"It's not like that," Kyungho croaked. "With me and Yeujin, I mean."

"Not like what?" Jongin asked, face blank, and Kyungho couldn't figure out if he really meant it.

 

 

 

At the airport, Kyungho was surprised to find Seohaeng waiting for them, holding two cups of coffee, like it was October and everything was normal and they were still a team. "I thought I'd meet you guys," he said, handing off a cup each to Kyungho and Jongin, "for old time's sake."

This was a coping mechanism, a type of grief response, and was probably directed at Jongin, who might still be Seohaeng's teammate in two weeks for Gyeonggi. Kyungho knew, but he clung to it anyway, because he was exhausted, wrung out on all sides and facing down the rest of the winter, the oncoming spring split, how much he had to learn before January. He drank the coffee too quickly and it burned his throat, burned all the words out of his mouth.

Seohaeng had come in the team van. With just the three of them, it was cavernous, the body of a giant newly hollowed out by ants. Jongin occupied a whole row all to himself and spent the trip resolutely tapping on his phone, not looking at anyone. Kyungho settled in for a nap next to Seohaeng, very carefully not touching him, but halfway through the ride home, the van hit a bump in the road, and Kyungho woke up to find his nose smashed against the side of Seohaeng's neck. Seohaeng was watching him, a slack, vulnerable look on his face, like he'd been caught doing something dirty. He turned sharply away, pretending to look out the window. Outside, the early morning was misty and distant, and Kyungho felt confused, thrown again, like he was sleepwalking through this final climax of his own tragedy.

"Seohaeng," Kyungho whispered, still half-asleep, "I like you the most. I'd jump off a mountain for you." 

He waited, holding his breath for so long he was almost dizzy. Eventually Seohaeng turned back around. He smiled — helplessly, wondrously — and snuck a hand around Kyungho's shoulder to hold him close. As he let himself be lulled back into the comforting blankness of sleep, Kyungho thought, at least for this one moment, he'd made them both happy.

Nothing, not even Kyungho himself, could take that away from them. 

 

 

 

**THE CONSOLATION IS THAT THIS MIGHT BE THE TRUTH.**

from Jenny Holzer, _The Living Series_

**Author's Note:**

> \- Both title and end note are part of the same Jenny Holzer excerpt.  
> \- Most of this was just going to be shameful headcanon but then I fell asleep on a plane on my way back home for Thanksgiving and woke up with 500 words of this shit.  
> \- I HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY FEELINGS DIARY  
> \- thanks to e., who has been the support to my adc before we even knew what those terms meant


End file.
